Posts tagged “homestead”

This is the last of five images in the Homestead series…each photograph was taken from a different perspective and processed with a different finish. To view the other four photos, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and then click on “Homestead Series” under the Categories list.

It might be the color, but this rendering strikes me more as an abandoned dwelling…maybe it’s because the mountains and trees that were visible in the other versions are missing and there is a feeling of derelict solitude here…I’m not sure…. This is the fourth of five images in the Homestead series…to see the other photographs, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Homestead Series under the Categories icon.

This is the third of five images in the Homestead series…different images of the same abandoned buildings on a property located a few miles north of the Salt Lake City airport. If you look through the trees on the left side of the photograph, and immediately above the second fence post from the left, you can see the air-traffic control tower…and the mountains in the background are the extreme northern end of the Oquirrh Mountains, the range that forms the western boundary of the Salt Lake Valley. To provide a bit more of a location reference, the Great Salt Lake is a few miles to the back and right of the image…. To see the other photographs in the Homestead series, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Homestead Series under the Categories icon.

This is the second image in the “Homestead” series, a collection of photographs of a particular setting, taken from slightly different perspectives and with various post-processing finishes that I have effected with Picasa. You can view the first/original photo by clicking here if you’d like to refresh your memory or have an immediate comparison for this black and white rendering…. Or, to see all of the photographs in the Homestead Series, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Homestead Series under the Categories icon.

This was the first of five images in the Homestead series…to see all of the photographs in the collection, you can scroll to the bottom of the page and click on Homestead Series under the Categories icon.

There’s a sound that a pick-axe makes when it’s plunged into the earth and dragged back out again; it’s the sound of metal opening the history of our lives, slamming into our powdery souls with a thick ferocity of hefted weight and muscle and sinew and limb…a stretching of cloth and skin in the arc toward the heavens of the steel head and hardwood handle singing through the air…and the slight visceral grunt as it lands with that freighted slice and drive through soil and rock, echoes cleaving the dust and clay that is ourselves and then…

there’s a sound that a saw makes when its teeth rip through the fibers of wood and brush; it’s the sound of a serrated blade slicing into our fingers or hands, driving through the cells of meat and unto bone…fine or rusted edges of metal rending our woody flesh, tearing it neatly into pieces that we hone and fit and hammer back together into other forms that cover and shelter us against the elements and gods; we take it with our hands and break it into pieces that will warm us or feed us, sometimes with the muted, wet splaying of green wood that wouldn’t break cleanly…like joints pulled backwards against nature and form…or with the sharp echoes of cracking branches and bones that flee into time and then…

there’s a sound that a scythe makes when it passes through grass and the wheat of the field; it’s the sound of an icy razor lifted and throwing light back at the sun, of muscles on shoulders and hips swaying in a life-rhythm and a whisper through the air and a shhhhhh through the grass as cell membranes burst against the blade and green it in its passing, dust and skin and grass and stem, seed-heads swaying in the breeze of man and his motion, aloft in the sky and a shhhhhh to the ground, the echoes of sunshine and air falling on the riching earth and then…

there’s a sound that flesh makes when it tears in that moment of thrust and climb, of muscle pounding into a hallowed cave; it’s the sound of hinge-less doors opening beneath a fusing flood of life and stranded helices, recombinant forms and particles charging, of a new pulse rising in a hidden place, one cell beating and beating…becoming…that time draws forth as it rips again, that sacred fleshy vault, echoes of life and death in a moment’s strain…and then…

there’s a sound that a house makes when it no longer harbors life within; it’s the sound of a derelict wind stealing through empty window panes and hollow echoes fading into the oblivion of lost time and then, memories disappearing like vapors drawn, weak flashes in smiles and tears, images forming and fading as sunlight passes through dust motes hanging…and when the moon finds night-time corners…sliding feet on worn boards, oil from hands on banisters evaporating molecules at a time, riding the ether of ever and gone, echoes of laughter and pain, no longer anchored with heartbeats away…echoes no longer anchored with heartbeats away…and then….

***Photo used with permission by Gary D. Bolstad at Krikitarts. The photograph was taken along the side of the road somewhere in Minnesota when Gary was returning home after a vacation in the woods. I encourage you to visit Gary’s site to share in his beautiful photography that demonstrates his love and fascination with our natural world.